Google Silently Adds 'Panic Detection Mode" to Android 7.1 – How It's Useful

[LowcyGier]

How often do you click the 'back' or the ‘Home’ button on your mobile device to exit an application immediately?

I believe, several times in a single day because a large number of apps do not have an exit button to directly force-close them instead of going back and back and back until they exit.

Sometimes Android users expect the back button to take them back to the back page, but sometimes they really want to exit the app immediately.


Often this has severe usability implications when a majority of users are already dealing with their low-performance mobile devices and believe that clicking back button multiple times would kill the app and save memory, but it doesn't.

Google has now addressed this issue and silently included a feature within Android 7.1 Nougat that allows users to exit from apps by pressing the 'back' key successively within 0.3 seconds for over four times.

Dubbed "Panic Detection Mode," the feature runs in the background of Android operating system and detects panic in situations when a user repeatedly presses the back button on their smartphone to exit an app and allows the operating system to override the application and send the user safely back to the home screen.

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